And let’s be honest, it’s flat out aggravating and embarrassing when we walk down a beach, pier, or boardwalk and see the amount of trash and litter that accumulates and is collected every week.

This is a typical day’s beach trash in many parts of the world

So when I saw the article about a guy that started the first ever plastic fishing company, it certainly grabbed my attention.

And when I saw he was not only “fishing for plastic” but he was also using the plastic he fished out from waterways to build boats from recycled plastic, I knew this was too cool of a story not to share with you.

Here is a cool pic of the Plastic Whale’s (the name of the plastic fishing company) founder Marius Smit in one of his boats made from recycled plastic.

Marius Smit in one of his plastic fishing boats made from actual plastic bottles he collected from the waterways

The Plastic Whale Fishing Company

So here are a few stats on this really cool company in the Netherlands called “The Plastic Whale”

The Mission of The Plastic Whale Fishing Company: make the world’s waters plastic-free and create value from plastic waste.

It started 5 years ago with a dream of founder Marius Smit to collect enough plastic in his local waterways that he could make a boat out of the recycled plastic and then go fishing for more

Today, they have a total of 6 recycled plastic boats

They make their money from boat tours where locals and tourists pay to take a ride on the recycled boats and clean up plastic

In other words, Plastic Whale has figured out a way to have people pay to help them clean up the waterways and has made cleaning up cool!